


This Is a Lie (This Is the Truth)

by tuesday



Series: Author's Favorites [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ambiguity, Eldritch Abominations, Gen, Horror, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Night, Storytelling, Trick or Treat: Challenge Yourself, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-09 03:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16441919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: Varric tells a story.





	This Is a Lie (This Is the Truth)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprocket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprocket/gifts).



> Sprocket, all your prompts were great! I saw you liked Kirkwall and Varric telling Cassandra stories. I hope this satisfies.
> 
> Thanks very much to AlexSeanchai for all your help with this! Any and all mistakes are entirely down to me.
> 
> Happy Trick or Treat!

Our story takes place in Kirkwall: City of Chains, City of Ghosts, City of the Dead and the Disheartened and the Forgotten. In Kirkwall, one needn't summon a demon to find them. The Veil is thin. Hands and faces press in from the other side, make strange shapes in the night to frighten the unwary. Gangs brawl in the street, and nighttime wanderers see their throats cut as often as their purses, but the bodies are all gone by morning. Things live and grow in the darkness, and they are hungry, always hungry.

Our story takes place on a cold autumn evening. There was a nip in the air. The scraggly trees that pushed up between pieces of cracked cobblestone and grew along the occasional stretches of dirt the residents of Lowtown claimed as something like front yards had shed over half their leaves. They rustled in the wind and crunched underfoot. The grass of the village green in front of the Chantry had gone a shade of brown the color of old, dried blood. Backyard gardens were bursting with the meager bounty their owners expected, hoped, to see them through winter's end, and scythes were being sharpened in anticipation of the harvest yet to come.

Every breath taken in burned, and anyone foolish enough to be out at this hour could taste iron at the back of their throat, a portent of things to come.

 

"I must say, Varric, this is not your usual fare." Cassandra didn't sound disapproving, just curious.

"I was hoping for more of a bodice-ripper." The Inquisitor cradled her chin in her hands and stuck her feet a little closer to the fire. "I'm sure you've got some great tales about Isabela or Hawke's various conquests." She waggled her eyebrows like she wanted to make sure Varric knew just what sort of "conquests" she was referring to.

"Do you want a story or not?" Varric asked, but he didn't wait for an answer before launching back in.

 

Kirkwall is a city of fools, and on this night, two such fools strolled down the streets of Hightown, moon bright overhead, intent on descending into the dark, low roads where the light of the stars never reaches. Shadows dogged at their heels, none the actual Mabari, left to guard the hearth at home. The scuffle of shoe leather on stone and the rasp of steel drawn from its scabbard was the only warning when death struck—harbinger not of the death of these two fools, but instead those foolish enough to attack them.

No, their blithe disregard for would-be brigands and murderers is not what was unusual here, this night, on an autumn so long ago—

 

"I don't think it can actually be that long ago if this is another Hawke story," the Inquisitor said. "I mean, that was what, a few years—"

"Hush." Cassandra put her hands over the Inquisitor's mouth, a move Varric would never try for fear of being bitten. "You're interrupting the story."

"I believe you interrupted first," Solas said.

Varric continued, voice raised, before it could devolve into petty bickering, rather than the mild scuffle taking place right now. It would be a miracle if no one ended up in the campfire before the night was through.

 

—is not what was unusual here, this night, _on an autumn so long ago_ , nor was it the absence of their valiant canine protector, stuffed full of treats and sleeping in front of an expertly banked fire. Trust me, that dog could put it away, and his naps were things of legend, though not the legend we're focusing on this night. This night was—is—special, the one night a year, it's said, where one can call on all the blood that has been spilled and all the bone that has been grist for the wheels of the city's underworld, and something more than blood, more than bone or the flesh that came with it, will answer.

But that makes it sound like these two idiots were planning to summon the damn thing—which, well, I wouldn't put it past the Champion to try just to kill it for good, but—

 

"So this _is_ a Hawke story," Cassandra said.

"It's Varric," the Inquisitor said. "It's always a Hawke story."

"Not always," Varric protested.

"Yes. Sometimes it's an Inquisitor story, now." Vivienne's smile was vicious as she added her piece.

Varric cleared his throat and moved on.

 

Word on the street, bandied about in hushed whispers and voices gone quiet with fear of drawing the attention of that of which they spoke, was that this night, this cold autumn night with its moon overhead and the dark deep below, was an anniversary—a day of birth, a day of death. They say on this night, deep in the past of Marcher history, before the city was a city or even had a name, the first ship landed at Kirkwall's shores. Gleaming waves lapped at its sides in patient and ever-present hunger, longing for the day that would join them in the depths below. It was a full moon then, too, its cold light illuminating the damp wood of the ship's prow and the rust red of chains left out overlong in salt sea air which encircled the limbs of its cargo and crew.

 

"Oh, goody," Dorian said. "More Imperium slaver stories. I do so enjoy hearing tales of the many crimes and misdeeds of my fellow countrymen."

Varric gave him a pointed look. Dorian made a motion like he was promising he'd be quiet for the rest of the night, or at least the rest of the tale. Even odds whether he kept it.

Varric pressed on.

 

It was a smuggler's ship, and the most valuable thing in their cargo was a curiosity said to be neither living nor dead, neither from the waking world nor the dreaming, but something beyond definition, beyond origin, beyond the knowledge and probing curiosity of any mortal being.

What the crew knew only was this: though it had slept as they'd loaded its cage into their hold, it was awake now. And it hungered.

 

"And then it ate the crew?" the Inquisitor asked, arch and in good humor.

"I am trying to tell a story here." Varric sighed. "Yeah, sure, and then it ate the crew."

 

Fine, you all know where this is going. It ate the damn crew, slithered its way overboard, and set up its home at the heart of what would become a great and terrible city. For years, decades, centuries, it fed on the fear and flesh, the lives and deaths, the rot and the little bits of new growth, all that Kirkwall created and all that it destroyed. The creature starved in times of peace and joy, the few that Kirkwall boasted, and grew heavy and full in Kirkwall's many times of war and sacrifice. Always, always, it hungered. Always, always, it fed.

And always, always, there were those who helped it feast.

 

Varric stopped to take a sip of his drink. Water, more's the pity, but his throat was dry, and he needed a moment to swallow. He could still taste the blood, the rust, in the back of his throat. The Inquisitor and Cassandra were leaning forward, drawn in. Dorian sat back, limbs loose, the very picture of casual, uncaring insouciance, but his face betrayed his interest. Vivienne's disinterest looked much more genuine. Solas's eyes glittered in the firelight, his expression inscrutable.

 

And that brings us back to this night, this cold autumn night so close, but so long ago, and our two fools, happy and hopelessly optimistic, hearing of a summoning without a summons and letting their curiosity drive them down, deep into the heart of the city. They walked down level by level, stair by stair, and they shed blood every step of the way.

The blood was unnecessary, not intended to draw anything forth, merely a consequence of walking, living, breathing in a city that bled or that bled you. The blood was unnecessary—the being was already there, in the shadows of every step, in the vapor of every breath, in every beat of their pulses quickening in the dark of the night—but it helped call it forth all the same. By the time they reached the bowels of Kirkwall, below Lowtown, below Darktown, beneath smuggler's shafts and the sewers and into the very foundations of the city itself, they caught glimpses from the corners of their eyes, heard snatches of its whispers and the fading echo of its laughter.

There, deep in the depths of the city, where natural light had never touched and torches ever guttered low, lay the creature, the beast, that indescribable, unknowable being, in all its terror and glory. It pulsed. It shuddered. It crooned. It was not dead; it was not alive. But it was definitely, undeniably _there_ , and its hunger reached across to encompass them, too. It was in their thoughts, in their minds, and it wanted to know them, wanted them to know.

It called itself—

 

Solas's grip, crushing in its tightness around Varric's arm, called Varric back to himself from the near trance the act of remembering had lulled him into.

"Do not," Solas enunciated carefully, "say the name."

Varric swallowed, mouth dry, but felt something warm and wet slide down his throat. He nodded. With a warmth and a lightness he didn't feel, he said, "Whatever you say, Chuckles."

 

It didn't matter what it called itself. It didn't matter what names or titles others ascribed to it.

This is what mattered: it was there, with them, in them, around them, and they had not let it in.

They had not let it in, but it had them in its grip now. And it refused to let them go.

 

There were no interruptions. The only sound was the crackle of the fire and the whisper of the wind ruffling and rifling through the autumn leaves. Varric had the camp's full attention, but he did not want it.

He did not want it.

"What happened?" the Inquisitor finally prompted.

"Yes," Cassandra agreed. "You cannot leave it there!"

Varric closed his eyes. He smiled, bitter and true.

 

It was dark. It was the evening of that anniversary, and when the sun rose, distant and unseen far overhead, the two, that pair of hapless, hopeless, once-optimistic fools, were once more alone.

The beast, the creature—the _thing_ —was gone. They told themselves: perhaps it was never really there. The air was bad. They'd had a bit—a lot—to drink before heading down. It was dark, and it was easy to mistake the shapes in the shadows for something ominous and unreal.

They picked themselves up off the cavern floors and walked, arm in arm and in desperate need of the support, up and out, into the light.

 

Varric stared into the campfire, let the light burn its way in and leave its afterimage and imprint in the back of his eyes.

"And that's it?"

"And that's it," Varric confirmed. He took another swig of water.

Solas watched more closely than the action warranted. Slowly, like he was choosing every word with care, he said, "It sounds like you were quite fortunate."

"That's me. Lucky as can be." Varric's smile this time was lies, all lies, and jagged on his lips. He closed his eyes again, watched the traces of the fire burned in. "But I never said I went down there. Do I look that stupid to you?"

"Yes," Cassandra said, blunt and unapologetic.

"Yeah, that's fair." Varric kept his eyes closed, watched the flickers of light. When he opened them, he let the false smile fade. "And that's my story for a cold and windy night. Who's next?"


End file.
